Greg Abbott Does not Give a Damn What He Says on Twitter

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, or at least the person running his Twitter account, is generally pretty feisty on the social media platform. His tweets are usually signed with the infamous TCOT hashtag — the portal to wingnut Internet hell, search it at your peril — and the governor's not afraid to weigh in on the conservative hot-button issue du jour, like the Planned Parenthood scare videos. Abbott also tweets a bunch about the more banal things he likes, like Whataburger or Blue Bell ice cream and sports. Sometimes, he combines a couple of the above and makes terrible jokes about the humanitarian crisis at his state's southern border.

That tweet came on Sunday in the midst of the Cowboys' defense melting down late in the team's loss to the Saints. It wouldn't end up being the worst thing Abbott said during the first three days of the week. Tuesday morning, Abbott let this one fly:

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So, beyond the weirdness of Abbott directing his tweet at the National Rifle Association and using the utterly useless hashtag "guns," there's a lot going on here. Abbott, apparently, is bragging that the state of Texas has failed to enact reasonable gun control legislation in the face of the more than 88,000 gun deaths that have occurred in the United States since the December 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. He's also mocking President Obama for the president's frustration that no one seems to have the political will to do anything about the ready access to firearms that has contributed to more than 400,000 American gun deaths since the fall of 2001. And he's doing this five days after a gunman at an Oregon community college killed nine people and himself. Which is par for the course, as Abbott indirectly dared the president to try to take one of his guns just two days after the mass killings.

See the blue check mark near Abbott's name? That means these tweets are coming from his verified account, the account that serves as the official voice of the leader of the state of Texas. The tweets have all been up for an extended period of time without being deleted. These aren't mistakes, he meant to say this stuff.

Stephen Young has written about Dallas news for the Observer since 2014. He's a Dallas native and a graduate of the University of North Texas.

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